My commitment is to F1, not to crusading against hyper-wealthy media bastards. Whilst I too hate Murdock, I've got plenty of other more important things to get angry about without having to sacrifice the only sport I watch in order to protest against Murdock.

And to the user who mentioned £500 a year... My first year's Sky+HD package with the F1 channel came to £162, which worked out as £13.50 p/month (I got it for that price as at the time Sky were offering £100 M&S vouchers if bought in December last year and I got £100 back through a cashback site). I felt this was totally worth it to trial the new F1 channel, and this offer was open to anyone.

And I love it. It'll be worth the £30 p/month for the second year. The coverage is the best, most thorough and comprehensive we've ever had in the UK. And with the greatest respect, I think F1 fans are going to have to get used to Sky, because I don't see this split deal with the BBC lasting forever. I've also got a feeling in me guts that DC will be making the move to Sky pretty soon.

There is no chance I will be subscribing to Sky for F1 coverage, the coverage on the BBC has been excellent and waiting a couple of hours for the highlights is no big thing.

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

We don't, there aren't any adverts when the cars are on track and there are none when the BBC are live.

Some people seem to love to ham up the actual reality to suit their own anti xyz views

You need to take a step back and see the bigger picture, this is not simply about the couple of hours an F1 race is shown on Sky, what about all the other times? the other channels? the other programs? You seem happy to pay for the pleasure of watching adverts. I am not. It's simple. Therefore I do not, and will not, subscribe to Sky until this situation changes, adverts or subscription but not both.

The BBC coverage of F1 is excellent in my opinion whether it's highlights or not, I am perfectly happy to wait and watch the BBC show either way and even with the issue of adverts on a subscription service aside, I save approximately £500 per year (without Sky subscription fees) and continue to enjoy F1. Pretty good I reckon.

I take it you don't buy newspapers, magazines, pay for your internet then, pay to ride on buses, pay to go into any type of public building? They all also contain plenty of advertising. But you avoid paying for anything that might have some advertising associated with it, right?

The world isn't black and white where we can say that always it is either right or wrong to have this situation. For example bus fairs are lower because they are subsidised by advertising and as the bus service is essential for many people they benefit actually from this advertising.

Sky is a luxury item, they made approximately 3 billion in profit last year and one of the major contributors to their profits is a financial model which means they are effectively being paid twice for each advert shown, firstly by the subscribers and secondly by the advertisers. Consumers are not receiving any significant benefits, for example with lowered subscription fees due to the advertising it is simply profit for Sky.

I choose not to pay to watch adverts on Sky, you do. It's not a case of right or wrong, only choice.

Well you see that is where you are wrong. I pay to watch a whole load of programmes I wouldn't be able to if I didn't pay. You on the other hand take some weird stance of moral outrage, but only related to this one situation, and miss out on all the excellent programmes I get to watch. Sucks to be you.

The world isn't black and white where we can say that always it is either right or wrong to have this situation. For example bus fairs are lower because they are subsidised by advertising and as the bus service is essential for many people they benefit actually from this advertising.

Sky is a luxury item, they made approximately 3 billion in profit last year and one of the major contributors to their profits is a financial model which means they are effectively being paid twice for each advert shown, firstly by the subscribers and secondly by the advertisers. Consumers are not receiving any significant benefits, for example with lowered subscription fees due to the advertising it is simply profit for Sky.

I choose not to pay to watch adverts on Sky, you do. It's not a case of right or wrong, only choice.

Well you see that is where you are wrong. I pay to watch a whole load of programmes I wouldn't be able to if I didn't pay. You on the other hand take some weird stance of moral outrage, but only related to this one situation, and miss out on all the excellent programmes I get to watch. Sucks to be you.

This forum is about F1, right? Whatever channel is showing full and live F1 is the one I'm watching.

I had Sky for a few GPs in the summer but I found that I only watched the race and the rest of the coverage carried too much advertising. So I cancelled and went back to the BBC. I won't get Sky again unless they sell just the F1 channel for a much lower price... (And to respond to the last post - no I don't buy any motorsport magazines.)

To be fair, the Sky coverage is excellent and is clearly aimed at the hardcore fan in a way that I assumed it wouldn't be. It's miles ahead of anything the BBC have ever done, even when they had all the races to themselves.

But I wish they could offer an "F1 channel only" subscription for a tenner instead of a £35 minimum monthly charge for channels I never watch.

It comes with the HD package which is only a tenner I believe.

I think he was referring to the fact that one can't get F1 on SKY without having to pay for a normal SKY subscription, when he would prefer to just pay a tenner for the F1 channel on it's own, without any other channels

To be fair, the Sky coverage is excellent and is clearly aimed at the hardcore fan in a way that I assumed it wouldn't be. It's miles ahead of anything the BBC have ever done, even when they had all the races to themselves.

But I wish they could offer an "F1 channel only" subscription for a tenner instead of a £35 minimum monthly charge for channels I never watch.

It comes with the HD package which is only a tenner I believe.

I think he was referring to the fact that one can't get F1 on SKY without having to pay for a normal SKY subscription, when he would prefer to just pay a tenner for the F1 channel on it's own, without any other channels

You can get it on Virgin Media as well - it's also a fair bit cheaper with them if you get a bundle.

We moved our Broadband, Phone and TV over to them and it worked out at just under £100 for everything - that may sound like a lot, but it included 2 tivo boxes and 1 standard box, 120mbps internet, unlimited calls (inc mobiles), etc. Before that, individually we were paying about £120 for Sky (non-hd, not even Sky+) in 1 room, 10mbps Virgin broadband and BT phone.

There is no chance I will be subscribing to Sky for F1 coverage, the coverage on the BBC has been excellent and waiting a couple of hours for the highlights is no big thing.

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

We don't, there aren't any adverts when the cars are on track and there are none when the BBC are live.

Some people seem to love to ham up the actual reality to suit their own anti xyz views

You need to take a step back and see the bigger picture, this is not simply about the couple of hours an F1 race is shown on Sky, what about all the other times? the other channels? the other programs? You seem happy to pay for the pleasure of watching adverts. I am not. It's simple. Therefore I do not, and will not, subscribe to Sky until this situation changes, adverts or subscription but not both.

You seem to have latched onto the adverts thing as if we're being ripped off or something. Maybe if you gave it a chance rather than spitting bile and screaming ADVVERTSS I NO PAY ADVERTS at the tele you'd realise, there aren't that many.

Do you buy F1 racing... Autosport? THE CHEEK OF THEM PUTTING ADVERTS IN AND MAKING ME PAY FOR IT!

Goodness! Where did that come from? are you feeling ok?

I'm really surprised by the vehemence towards me shown by PZR and yourself with regard to this topic. I am not your enemy, I am just a girl who has chosen not to purchase a Sky subscription. The OP asked us to state if we would change our viewing habits and all I have done is reply and state my reason. Demeaning yourselves by throwing personal insults around over such an inconsequential topic would be amusing if you didn't appear to genuinely be angered that I should make a different choice to you.

I'm not sure it's possible to feel morale outrage over a TV subscription but I guess you guys must, for me it's a financial decision because my view is that it is a ripoff to pay to watch adverts so I vote with my purse by choosing not to subscribe. That's all.

There is no chance I will be subscribing to Sky for F1 coverage, the coverage on the BBC has been excellent and waiting a couple of hours for the highlights is no big thing.

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

We don't, there aren't any adverts when the cars are on track and there are none when the BBC are live.

Some people seem to love to ham up the actual reality to suit their own anti xyz views

You need to take a step back and see the bigger picture, this is not simply about the couple of hours an F1 race is shown on Sky, what about all the other times? the other channels? the other programs? You seem happy to pay for the pleasure of watching adverts. I am not. It's simple. Therefore I do not, and will not, subscribe to Sky until this situation changes, adverts or subscription but not both.

You seem to have latched onto the adverts thing as if we're being ripped off or something. Maybe if you gave it a chance rather than spitting bile and screaming ADVVERTSS I NO PAY ADVERTS at the tele you'd realise, there aren't that many.

Do you buy F1 racing... Autosport? THE CHEEK OF THEM PUTTING ADVERTS IN AND MAKING ME PAY FOR IT!

Goodness! Where did that come from? are you feeling ok?

I'm really surprised by the vehemence towards me shown by PZR and yourself with regard to this topic. I am not your enemy, I am just a girl who has chosen not to purchase a Sky subscription. The OP asked us to state if we would change our viewing habits and all I have done is reply and state my reason. Demeaning yourselves by throwing personal insults around over such an inconsequential topic would be amusing if you didn't appear to genuinely be angered that I should make a different choice to you.

I'm not sure it's possible to feel morale outrage over a TV subscription but I guess you guys must, for me it's a financial decision because my view is that it is a ripoff to pay to watch adverts so I vote with my purse by choosing not to subscribe. That's all.

And I'm amazed by some of the outright bollocks you have spoken in the is thread. If it was all about you why did you bring others into it in your original comment

You can't or are not prepared to afford it, that's fair enough but don't make up some cock and bull story about adverts. Probably would have been best to leave out the amateur dramatics and fibs of your initial post too

If it was all about you why did you bring others into it in your original comment

You can't or are not prepared to afford it, that's fair enough but don't make up some cock and bull story about adverts.

I didn't bring anyone in, the choice to respond as you did was yours not mine.

Your comments may be 'cock and bull', mine are not, I stand by what I said - I won't pay to watch adverts on sky. What you choose to do is up to you. Your strangely & overly vociferous resentment of my choice in this matter puzzles me and I wonder why you cant accept what I'm saying; trying to twist it into something its not - what reason do you have?

It would be a very sad world indeed if missing a few TV shows would make someone's life suck, does this have something to do with it?

If it was all about you why did you bring others into it in your original comment

You can't or are not prepared to afford it, that's fair enough but don't make up some cock and bull story about adverts.

I didn't bring anyone in, the choice to respond as you did was yours not mine.

Your comments may be 'cock and bull', mine are not, I stand by what I said - I won't pay to watch adverts on sky. What you choose to do is up to you. Your strangely & overly vociferous resentment of my choice in this matter puzzles me and I wonder why you cant accept what I'm saying; trying to twist it into something its not - what reason do you have?

It would be a very sad world indeed if missing a few TV shows would make someone's life suck, does this have something to do with it?

Hmm,

Quote:

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

You very much did bring other people into it. Why you felt the need only you can answer. I don't resent your choice, just the cock and bull reasons you have given for making that choice.

To be fair, the Sky coverage is excellent and is clearly aimed at the hardcore fan in a way that I assumed it wouldn't be. It's miles ahead of anything the BBC have ever done, even when they had all the races to themselves.

But I wish they could offer an "F1 channel only" subscription for a tenner instead of a £35 minimum monthly charge for channels I never watch.

It comes with the HD package which is only a tenner I believe.

I think he was referring to the fact that one can't get F1 on SKY without having to pay for a normal SKY subscription, when he would prefer to just pay a tenner for the F1 channel on it's own, without any other channels

You can get it on Virgin Media as well - it's also a fair bit cheaper with them if you get a bundle.

We moved our Broadband, Phone and TV over to them and it worked out at just under £100 for everything - that may sound like a lot, but it included 2 tivo boxes and 1 standard box, 120mbps internet, unlimited calls (inc mobiles), etc. Before that, individually we were paying about £120 for Sky (non-hd, not even Sky+) in 1 room, 10mbps Virgin broadband and BT phone.

I'm surprised about the figures you're quoting. Are you sure you haven't been mugged?

I pay around £48 per month for my SKY, including the entertainment pack, HD and Multi-room and I think that's a small fortune. It's basically because I live where elephants go to die and struggle to even get Freeview - it's either SKY or play charades every night

Location is the same reason I pay around £25 per month for my BB, which is 8mbps unlimited and includes line rental and unlimited daytime landline calls. If I lived near civilisation and had e.g. cable as a choice then the whole lot would drop to under £50, including all of the above plus faster BB and unlimited mobile calls too. You're paying double that - are you sure you're not paying your neighbour's bills too?

Not sure if this has been stated, discussed or whatever but it comes up from time to time:

THERE ARE NO ADVERTS DURING QUALI/RACE COVERAGE - EVER and the last advert break (there are only about 2 breaks before the race - one of which is the McLaren 'Tooned' one) is always at least 30 minutes before the race, and then they dont have one for at least 30 minutes after the race.

Also, the adbreaks on Sky F1 are MUCH shorter than your normal adbreak as they are mostly F1 related/specialist ads. For example there's the lotus 'sure' advert which is about 25 seconds long - thats the entire ad break.

If it was all about you why did you bring others into it in your original comment

You can't or are not prepared to afford it, that's fair enough but don't make up some cock and bull story about adverts.

I didn't bring anyone in, the choice to respond as you did was yours not mine.

Your comments may be 'cock and bull', mine are not, I stand by what I said - I won't pay to watch adverts on sky. What you choose to do is up to you. Your strangely & overly vociferous resentment of my choice in this matter puzzles me and I wonder why you cant accept what I'm saying; trying to twist it into something its not - what reason do you have?

It would be a very sad world indeed if missing a few TV shows would make someone's life suck, does this have something to do with it?

But you don't pay to watch adverts. You pay to watch television programmes and some - not all - of them happen to have adverts in. You seem happy to record and watch later so by doing that you wouldn't have to watch any adverts anyway.

Major sporting events such as F1 don't have ads in them anyway, at least not during the race itself. I rarely watch the buildup so I have a pretty much advert free viewing.

I understand not watching SKY due to financial reasons as it's not cheap. You do, however, get an awfully big choice of television programmes to watch and free F1 thrown in, which I appreciate doesn't suit everybody. Adverts are a red herring though as it's not even necessary to watch them depending on your viewing habits.

To be fair, the Sky coverage is excellent and is clearly aimed at the hardcore fan in a way that I assumed it wouldn't be. It's miles ahead of anything the BBC have ever done, even when they had all the races to themselves.

But I wish they could offer an "F1 channel only" subscription for a tenner instead of a £35 minimum monthly charge for channels I never watch.

It comes with the HD package which is only a tenner I believe.

I think he was referring to the fact that one can't get F1 on SKY without having to pay for a normal SKY subscription, when he would prefer to just pay a tenner for the F1 channel on it's own, without any other channels

You can get it on Virgin Media as well - it's also a fair bit cheaper with them if you get a bundle.

We moved our Broadband, Phone and TV over to them and it worked out at just under £100 for everything - that may sound like a lot, but it included 2 tivo boxes and 1 standard box, 120mbps internet, unlimited calls (inc mobiles), etc. Before that, individually we were paying about £120 for Sky (non-hd, not even Sky+) in 1 room, 10mbps Virgin broadband and BT phone.

I'm surprised about the figures you're quoting. Are you sure you haven't been mugged?

I pay around £48 per month for my SKY, including the entertainment pack, HD and Multi-room and I think that's a small fortune. It's basically because I live where elephants go to die and struggle to even get Freeview - it's either SKY or play charades every night

Location is the same reason I pay around £25 per month for my BB, which is 8mbps unlimited and includes line rental and unlimited daytime landline calls. If I lived near civilisation and had e.g. cable as a choice then the whole lot would drop to under £50, including all of the above plus faster BB and unlimited mobile calls too. You're paying double that - are you sure you're not paying your neighbour's bills too?

It does sound dear, but its not.

We moved from 1 sky box with 'everything' except HD, to virgin with everything on 2 tivo boxes and a virgin VHD box, all in HD and with on-demand content.

We were also paying about £48 for Sky, our phone bill was about £45 a month, then broadband was £25 a month. Total was £128 a month (or there abouts).

Now we've got the Virgin 'VIP' bundle with a few extra bits added on for being long time customers (Been on Cable broadband since the days of Cable & Wireless!) and it's a little under £100 and we're getting a huge amount more.

To give you an idea on the Sky costs. If we wanted to move from our Sky SD (non-recording) box to 2x Sky+ HD and then have the standard Sky HD box in another room, we'd have been looking at:

Then to top that off, you cant get access to the on-demand content without Sky Broadband!

Another thing as well, the Sky on-demand content selection is pretty small when compared to Virgin's - they have all the Sky anytime content (free) plus their own stuff, and stuff added by other TV channels. This is all in addition to iPlayer/ITV Player/4OD/5/etc as well.

Each Virgin box also has its own dedicated 10mbps internet connection, and doesnt piggy back off your own internet, so wont slow down streaming, even in HD. We've had all three boxes streaming HD content, and it's worked perfectly fine as the cable connection into your house is theoretically capable of upto 10GBPS in connectivity.

If it was all about you why did you bring others into it in your original comment

You can't or are not prepared to afford it, that's fair enough but don't make up some cock and bull story about adverts.

I didn't bring anyone in, the choice to respond as you did was yours not mine.

Your comments may be 'cock and bull', mine are not, I stand by what I said - I won't pay to watch adverts on sky. What you choose to do is up to you. Your strangely & overly vociferous resentment of my choice in this matter puzzles me and I wonder why you cant accept what I'm saying; trying to twist it into something its not - what reason do you have?

It would be a very sad world indeed if missing a few TV shows would make someone's life suck, does this have something to do with it?

Hmm,

Quote:

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

You very much did bring other people into it. Why you felt the need only you can answer. I don't resent your choice, just the cock and bull reasons you have given for making that choice.

The truth is no-one held a gun to your head and forced you to respond. The choice to do so was yours alone.

Just because you don't agree with my reasons does not make them 'cock and bull'. 'Cock and bull' is when you tell someone their life sucks because they wont get to watch some TV programmes.

I'm fine without Sky, 10 races live on the BBC and for the others if they do 2 hours for highlights then I watch it, as it feels like you are basically watching the whole race delayed, but with the hour and a half shows I just watch it through RTL.

Might get Sky in the future but for the moment I would quite like to spend my money on other things seeing as I can still see the races basically in full without Sky.

_________________Support: Kimi, Lewis, Jenson, THE HULK and Super Kevin Magnussen Respect: Eyebrow man, Schumi and finally after three long years Sebastian Vettel. Fairplay to the guy he is quick!Still don't like: Di Resta and his neck glassing team mate

If it was all about you why did you bring others into it in your original comment

You can't or are not prepared to afford it, that's fair enough but don't make up some cock and bull story about adverts.

I didn't bring anyone in, the choice to respond as you did was yours not mine.

Your comments may be 'cock and bull', mine are not, I stand by what I said - I won't pay to watch adverts on sky. What you choose to do is up to you. Your strangely & overly vociferous resentment of my choice in this matter puzzles me and I wonder why you cant accept what I'm saying; trying to twist it into something its not - what reason do you have?

It would be a very sad world indeed if missing a few TV shows would make someone's life suck, does this have something to do with it?

Hmm,

Quote:

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

You very much did bring other people into it. Why you felt the need only you can answer. I don't resent your choice, just the cock and bull reasons you have given for making that choice.

The truth is no-one held a gun to your head and forced you to respond. The choice to do so was yours alone.

Just because you don't agree with my reasons does not make them 'cock and bull'. 'Cock and bull' is when you tell someone their life sucks because they wont get to watch some TV programmes.

Off course they are cock and bull. You can't understand why a sports mad fan would pay to watch at least extended highlights of pretty much every premier league football game, every champions league game, every PGA Tour and European PGA Tour golf event, every ATP tennis championship, every F1 weekend live and uninterrupted, several rugby league and union games per week from the major leagues around the world, every England cricket match, several NFL games per week, etc, etc? If you can't understand that then your either incredibly stupid or your lying. As I said cock and bull to try and prove your point. What you should have said was, 'I can't afford' or 'I'm not prepared to pay for Sky'. That is perfectly acceptable, however to try and tag some other crap on about not understanding why other people do is a load of bollocks and what I took issue with.

Well if I lived in UK again: Dish aimed to RTL sat + Radio5 commentary. Done.

Here in the US, I have to pay for the "digital preferred" package just to get SPEED channel. Overall not bad, $80/mo for internet/digital cable+DVR, but I bring up the Sky stream on PC and mute the TV when it goes to adverts on Speed Channel.

_________________As soon as you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

We moved from 1 sky box with 'everything' except HD, to virgin with everything on 2 tivo boxes and a virgin VHD box, all in HD and with on-demand content.

We were also paying about £48 for Sky, our phone bill was about £45 a month, then broadband was £25 a month. Total was £128 a month (or there abouts).

Now we've got the Virgin 'VIP' bundle with a few extra bits added on for being long time customers (Been on Cable broadband since the days of Cable & Wireless!) and it's a little under £100 and we're getting a huge amount more.

To give you an idea on the Sky costs. If we wanted to move from our Sky SD (non-recording) box to 2x Sky+ HD and then have the standard Sky HD box in another room, we'd have been looking at:

Then to top that off, you cant get access to the on-demand content without Sky Broadband!

Another thing as well, the Sky on-demand content selection is pretty small when compared to Virgin's - they have all the Sky anytime content (free) plus their own stuff, and stuff added by other TV channels. This is all in addition to iPlayer/ITV Player/4OD/5/etc as well.

Each Virgin box also has its own dedicated 10mbps internet connection, and doesnt piggy back off your own internet, so wont slow down streaming, even in HD. We've had all three boxes streaming HD content, and it's worked perfectly fine as the cable connection into your house is theoretically capable of upto 10GBPS in connectivity.

So VM was really a no brainer for us. Obviously it wont make sense (financially) for those with smaller TV and broadband packages or in non-VM cabled areas.

Nah, not now. Sky changed it so you can now use any broadband provider to connect to the Sky+ box to access their on-demand, maybe realising that their broadband is complete peaky

I have pretty much the same package as you with the exception my 3rd box is a V+HD and 50mbps BB although that will soon be doubled . As for will me paying change after Sunday? No it won't as I was already paying for the sports package so the F1 channel was no additional cost to me when it was added.

Nah, not now. Sky changed it so you can now use any broadband provider to connect to the Sky+ box to access their on-demand, maybe realising that their broadband is complete peaky

I have pretty much the same package as you with the exception my 3rd box is a V+HD and 50mbps BB although that will soon be doubled . As for will me paying change after Sunday? No it won't as I was already paying for the sports package so the F1 channel was no additional cost to me when it was added.

Ahh fair enough on the internet side of things. Guess they probably did one of their little 'exclusive for a year' things.

Wouldnt be at all surprised if we get the HD channel on VM next year. Not that it bothers me if we dont - the F1 FOM HD feed is certainly not full HD.

Off course they are cock and bull. You can't understand why a sports mad fan would pay to watch at least extended highlights of pretty much every premier league football game, every champions league game, every PGA Tour and European PGA Tour golf event, every ATP tennis championship, every F1 weekend live and uninterrupted, several rugby league and union games per week from the major leagues around the world, every England cricket match, several NFL games per week, etc, etc? If you can't understand that then your either incredibly stupid or your lying. As I said cock and bull to try and prove your point. What you should have said was, 'I can't afford' or 'I'm not prepared to pay for Sky'. That is perfectly acceptable, however to try and tag some other crap on about not understanding why other people do is a load of bollocks and what I took issue with.

You remind me of a dog I know named Ted. Ted had an imaginary itch and he started chewing at it, eventually he chewed off all his fur, then through the skin and started chewing away the flesh of his leg. So Ted had to wear one of those large plastic collars, you know the kind, it's the kind of collar that stops a dog from chewing his own leg off. You're probably wondering what happened to poor old Ted's leg? His leg got better once the collar went on and he couldn't chew his leg anymore, but you know what - as soon as the collar was removed he started all over again.

You're like Ted, and I'm your imaginary itch. It doesn't matter to you anymore that the very point we started discussing has been lost you just keep on chewing away no matter how dumb it is. You spend your time thowing childish insults around, calling me stupid, trying to make up some fairy story about how i'm talking 'bollocks' or telling me my life sucks over missing some meaningless TV show and all the time you don't see how badly all this reflects on you because you seem unwilling or incapable or having an intelligent discussion.

I'm sure there is a reason you need to insult someone for nothing more than having the audacity to disagree with you, the sad thing is that this topic could have been anything and you would have resorted to insults just the same - but you can't win an argument with insults all it does is make you look weak.

You need to get your perspective back and ask yourself what you are doing and why, don't be like Ted chewing away forever without any reason. The only person you will damage is yourself.

You also need to understand that you cannot tell someone what their reasons for doing something are. All you can do is disagree with those reasons or have reasons of your own.

Off course they are cock and bull. You can't understand why a sports mad fan would pay to watch at least extended highlights of pretty much every premier league football game, every champions league game, every PGA Tour and European PGA Tour golf event, every ATP tennis championship, every F1 weekend live and uninterrupted, several rugby league and union games per week from the major leagues around the world, every England cricket match, several NFL games per week, etc, etc? If you can't understand that then your either incredibly stupid or your lying. As I said cock and bull to try and prove your point. What you should have said was, 'I can't afford' or 'I'm not prepared to pay for Sky'. That is perfectly acceptable, however to try and tag some other crap on about not understanding why other people do is a load of bollocks and what I took issue with.

You remind me of a dog I know named Ted. Ted had an imaginary itch and he started chewing at it, eventually he chewed off all his fur, then through the skin and started chewing away the flesh of his leg. So Ted had to wear one of those large plastic collars, you know the kind, it's the kind of collar that stops a dog from chewing his own leg off. You're probably wondering what happened to poor old Ted's leg? His leg got better once the collar went on and he couldn't chew his leg anymore, but you know what - as soon as the collar was removed he started all over again.

You're like Ted, and I'm your imaginary itch. It doesn't matter to you anymore that the very point we started discussing has been lost you just keep on chewing away no matter how dumb it is. You spend your time thowing childish insults around, calling me stupid, trying to make up some fairy story about how i'm talking 'bollocks' or telling me my life sucks over missing some meaningless TV show and all the time you don't see how badly all this reflects on you because you seem unwilling or incapable or having an intelligent discussion.

I'm sure there is a reason you need to insult someone for nothing more than having the audacity to disagree with you, the sad thing is that this topic could have been anything and you would have resorted to insults just the same - but you can't win an argument with insults all it does is make you look weak.

You need to get your perspective back and ask yourself what you are doing and why, don't be like Ted chewing away forever without any reason. The only person you will damage is yourself.

You also need to understand that you cannot tell someone what their reasons for doing something are. All you can do is disagree with those reasons or have reasons of your own.

Or maybe you're Ted and I'm a little flea that keeps on biting. And you just can't stop scratching. Takes two to have a conversation, and you're free to stop any time you want

You know what would be great? If you actually addressed some of the points I made. Rather than this smoke screen you keep putting up so you don't have to deal with them

As for intelligent debate...what intelligence did this add to the debate?

Quote:

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

You took all of Sky TV and boiled it down to adverts, rubbish channels and channels available on freeview. A distinct lack of intelligence in that comment don't you think?

Nah, not now. Sky changed it so you can now use any broadband provider to connect to the Sky+ box to access their on-demand, maybe realising that their broadband is complete peaky

I have pretty much the same package as you with the exception my 3rd box is a V+HD and 50mbps BB although that will soon be doubled . As for will me paying change after Sunday? No it won't as I was already paying for the sports package so the F1 channel was no additional cost to me when it was added.

Ahh fair enough on the internet side of things. Guess they probably did one of their little 'exclusive for a year' things.

Wouldnt be at all surprised if we get the HD channel on VM next year. Not that it bothers me if we dont - the F1 FOM HD feed is certainly not full HD.

If we do get the HD then its a bonus but the way Tivo upscales it, watching on my Samsung is perfectly satisfactory for me

Off course they are cock and bull. You can't understand why a sports mad fan would pay to watch at least extended highlights of pretty much every premier league football game, every champions league game, every PGA Tour and European PGA Tour golf event, every ATP tennis championship, every F1 weekend live and uninterrupted, several rugby league and union games per week from the major leagues around the world, every England cricket match, several NFL games per week, etc, etc? If you can't understand that then your either incredibly stupid or your lying. As I said cock and bull to try and prove your point. What you should have said was, 'I can't afford' or 'I'm not prepared to pay for Sky'. That is perfectly acceptable, however to try and tag some other crap on about not understanding why other people do is a load of bollocks and what I took issue with.

You remind me of a dog I know named Ted. Ted had an imaginary itch and he started chewing at it, eventually he chewed off all his fur, then through the skin and started chewing away the flesh of his leg. So Ted had to wear one of those large plastic collars, you know the kind, it's the kind of collar that stops a dog from chewing his own leg off. You're probably wondering what happened to poor old Ted's leg? His leg got better once the collar went on and he couldn't chew his leg anymore, but you know what - as soon as the collar was removed he started all over again.

You're like Ted, and I'm your imaginary itch. It doesn't matter to you anymore that the very point we started discussing has been lost you just keep on chewing away no matter how dumb it is. You spend your time thowing childish insults around, calling me stupid, trying to make up some fairy story about how i'm talking 'bollocks' or telling me my life sucks over missing some meaningless TV show and all the time you don't see how badly all this reflects on you because you seem unwilling or incapable or having an intelligent discussion.

I'm sure there is a reason you need to insult someone for nothing more than having the audacity to disagree with you, the sad thing is that this topic could have been anything and you would have resorted to insults just the same - but you can't win an argument with insults all it does is make you look weak.

You need to get your perspective back and ask yourself what you are doing and why, don't be like Ted chewing away forever without any reason. The only person you will damage is yourself.

You also need to understand that you cannot tell someone what their reasons for doing something are. All you can do is disagree with those reasons or have reasons of your own.

Or maybe you're Ted and I'm a little flea that keeps on biting. And you just can't stop scratching. Takes two to have a conversation, and you're free to stop any time you want

You know what would be great? If you actually addressed some of the points I made. Rather than this smoke screen you keep putting up so you don't have to deal with them

As for intelligent debate...what intelligence did this add to the debate?

Quote:

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

You took all of Sky TV and boiled it down to adverts, rubbish channels and channels available on freeview. A distinct lack of intelligence in that comment don't you think?

You're still chewing away I see. Just like Ted you think the imaginary itch is real - but you haven't been discussing the original topic for some time, you have been doing your best to ignore the topic by making this personal and throwing around insults and yet you don't see the hypocrisy of your comments.

I would like to believe you want to have a reasonable debate but until you can stop putting insults in your posts you're not ready. You need to let go of your 'imaginary itch' or I will always appear to you as the enemy, but I'm really not and it's not necessary to insult someone over something so utterly in-consequencial.

Off course they are cock and bull. You can't understand why a sports mad fan would pay to watch at least extended highlights of pretty much every premier league football game, every champions league game, every PGA Tour and European PGA Tour golf event, every ATP tennis championship, every F1 weekend live and uninterrupted, several rugby league and union games per week from the major leagues around the world, every England cricket match, several NFL games per week, etc, etc? If you can't understand that then your either incredibly stupid or your lying. As I said cock and bull to try and prove your point. What you should have said was, 'I can't afford' or 'I'm not prepared to pay for Sky'. That is perfectly acceptable, however to try and tag some other crap on about not understanding why other people do is a load of bollocks and what I took issue with.

You remind me of a dog I know named Ted. Ted had an imaginary itch and he started chewing at it, eventually he chewed off all his fur, then through the skin and started chewing away the flesh of his leg. So Ted had to wear one of those large plastic collars, you know the kind, it's the kind of collar that stops a dog from chewing his own leg off. You're probably wondering what happened to poor old Ted's leg? His leg got better once the collar went on and he couldn't chew his leg anymore, but you know what - as soon as the collar was removed he started all over again.

You're like Ted, and I'm your imaginary itch. It doesn't matter to you anymore that the very point we started discussing has been lost you just keep on chewing away no matter how dumb it is. You spend your time thowing childish insults around, calling me stupid, trying to make up some fairy story about how i'm talking 'bollocks' or telling me my life sucks over missing some meaningless TV show and all the time you don't see how badly all this reflects on you because you seem unwilling or incapable or having an intelligent discussion.

I'm sure there is a reason you need to insult someone for nothing more than having the audacity to disagree with you, the sad thing is that this topic could have been anything and you would have resorted to insults just the same - but you can't win an argument with insults all it does is make you look weak.

You need to get your perspective back and ask yourself what you are doing and why, don't be like Ted chewing away forever without any reason. The only person you will damage is yourself.

You also need to understand that you cannot tell someone what their reasons for doing something are. All you can do is disagree with those reasons or have reasons of your own.

Or maybe you're Ted and I'm a little flea that keeps on biting. And you just can't stop scratching. Takes two to have a conversation, and you're free to stop any time you want

You know what would be great? If you actually addressed some of the points I made. Rather than this smoke screen you keep putting up so you don't have to deal with them

As for intelligent debate...what intelligence did this add to the debate?

Quote:

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

You took all of Sky TV and boiled it down to adverts, rubbish channels and channels available on freeview. A distinct lack of intelligence in that comment don't you think?

You're still chewing away I see. Just like Ted you think the imaginary itch is real - but you haven't been discussing the original topic for some time, you have been doing your best to ignore the topic by making this personal and throwing around insults and yet you don't see the hypocrisy of your comments.

I would like to believe you want to have a reasonable debate but until you can stop putting insults in your posts you're not ready. You need to let go of your 'imaginary itch' or I will always appear to you as the enemy, but I'm really not and it's not necessary to insult someone over something so utterly in-consequencial.

Still not answering any questions I pose? This was your first input into this 'debate'.

Lucifer wrote:

There is no chance I will be subscribing to Sky for F1 coverage, the coverage on the BBC has been excellent and waiting a couple of hours for the highlights is no big thing.

I cannot understand why people pay to watch adverts, or for channels which are either complete rubbish or are available on Freeview or FreeSat.

I took issue at the time with the second paragraph. And it's still what I take issue with. I have asked you a few questions in regard to this. Questions you have ignored. Let me repeat, just in case you're having trouble understanding, I have no issue with your decision to not pay for Sky, you are free to make that choice and it's a perfectly reasonable stance to take. However, your second paragraph does not paint the reality of the situation. I have given a perfect example of why someone would want to pay for Sky TV. It wouldn't have been a giant leap for anyone to understand that hence why I made the comment I did. You are free to take any stance you want, however, you should expect to be challenged when you make statements that fly in the face of reality. So it might be best to just admit that your understanding was flawed and you can then stop scratching that flea

Sky have been very effective with their financial model with some very good profitability results, if we look at a simple example of Sky's financial model we can understand the balance between subscriptions and advertising. Please note this is just a simple example:-

In July last year Sky announced profits of £1073m and had 10.3m customers. So if we make an assumption that the average Sky customer is paying £50 per month for their subscription we could say that £515m of their profit came from subscriptions (48%) and £558m from advertising (52%).

I don't know what you guys think, and to me it really doesn't matter because I'm not a Sky customer but personally £558m profit per year seems enough. If I was a customer I would be asking why I'm paying a subscription because if Sky was a free to air service paid for solely by existing advertising they're profits would have still have been £558m. Alternatively if Sky were to provide their service without advertising and maintain the same (assumed) average fee per customer of £50, their profits would have been £515m.

Of course as a business Sky will do everything they can to maximise profits, and if you're a shareholder you're probably rubbing your hands together with glee at the prospect of a large dividend. But as a customer, you should always try to get the best possible value for a product and considering the information above, perhaps you should consider if you're really getting good value when most of what you pay goes not to cover operational costs but into profit.

Sky have been very effective with their financial model with some very good profitability results, if we look at a simple example of Sky's financial model we can understand the balance between subscriptions and advertising. Please note this is just a simple example:-

In July last year Sky announced profits of £1073m and had 10.3m customers. So if we make an assumption that the average Sky customer is paying £50 per month for their subscription we could say that £515m of their profit came from subscriptions (48%) and £558m from advertising (52%).

I don't know what you guys think, and to me it really doesn't matter because I'm not a Sky customer but personally £558m profit per year seems enough. If I was a customer I would be asking why I'm paying a subscription because if Sky was a free to air service paid for solely by existing advertising they're profits would have still have been £558m. Alternatively if Sky were to provide their service without advertising and maintain the same (assumed) average fee per customer of £50, their profits would have been £515m.

Of course as a business Sky will do everything they can to maximise profits, and if you're a shareholder you're probably rubbing your hands together with glee at the prospect of a large dividend. But as a customer, you should always try to get the best possible value for a product and considering the information above, perhaps you should consider if you're really getting good value when most of what you pay goes not to cover operational costs but into profit.

Do you really think I would still be paying for something if I didn't think it was good value for money? Sky's profits or how they are made up are inconsequential to me. They provide me with a product that I feel I get very good value for. The creation of the dedicated F1 channel meant I got even better value for money because I got a whole new channel dedicated to a sport I love for no extra cost. So as I have repeatedly said you are free to make your choice and it is a perfectly legitimate one. However, the second paragraph of your initial post is not a true reflection of reality and that it what I had and still have a problem with. So you can keep introducing new elements to your argument but none of them will change what you wrote in that second paragraph.

For example, the £50 sub isn't just paying for the programming it's paying for the hardware. So the £50 is not profit as per your calcs.

Second does that 10.3 million customers included businesses? I believe Pubs pay a little bit more than £50 a month. I read a bit there on a quick google that suggests that some places are paying Thousands per month. Screwing up the average some what.

For example, the £50 sub isn't just paying for the programming it's paying for the hardware. So the £50 is not profit as per your calcs.

Second does that 10.3 million customers included businesses? I believe Pubs pay a little bit more than £50 a month. I read a bit there on a quick google that suggests that some places are paying Thousands per month. Screwing up the average some what.

You're right,- it's an overly simplistic model I just presented it as an example. I'm sure Sky's business customers are paying considerably more for the service, I imagine hotels in particular pay a substantial amount for the privilege of passing on the Sky service to their customers. But simplistic or not it highlights that Sky's profit margin is very high. As long as their customers are prepared to pay the going rate they will milk it for as long as they can, a funny statistic is that if we assume that 2% of all viewing is people watching adverts Sky made £21.46m profit from this alone, I'd like a slice of that cake!

Sky have been very effective with their financial model with some very good profitability results, if we look at a simple example of Sky's financial model we can understand the balance between subscriptions and advertising. Please note this is just a simple example:-

In July last year Sky announced profits of £1073m and had 10.3m customers. So if we make an assumption that the average Sky customer is paying £50 per month for their subscription we could say that £515m of their profit came from subscriptions (48%) and £558m from advertising (52%).

I don't know what you guys think, and to me it really doesn't matter because I'm not a Sky customer but personally £558m profit per year seems enough. If I was a customer I would be asking why I'm paying a subscription because if Sky was a free to air service paid for solely by existing advertising they're profits would have still have been £558m. Alternatively if Sky were to provide their service without advertising and maintain the same (assumed) average fee per customer of £50, their profits would have been £515m.

Of course as a business Sky will do everything they can to maximise profits, and if you're a shareholder you're probably rubbing your hands together with glee at the prospect of a large dividend. But as a customer, you should always try to get the best possible value for a product and considering the information above, perhaps you should consider if you're really getting good value when most of what you pay goes not to cover operational costs but into profit.

there are couple of points on here I find a little bit odd. If you don't mind me asking I'm curious as to the following:

1. Why should you care or worry about how much profit a company is making? Do you always choose your goods or services on the basis of how much profit a company makes or on whether you actually need (or want) the goods or services themselves?2. On the subject of value for money, the value is surely in the service the customer receives, not in how much it has cost the company to provide it. If the value of a TV service is £x, then why should it matter whether the company supplements that income with additional advertising? The customer still gets the subscription they have paid for. Now I understand if you feel that a television service is not worth £31.50 per month (the cheapest offering with HD, and therefore F1, I believe); it's a lot of money to pay. But whatever the amount you do feel is reasonable I don't understand why what the company does in the background should influence your opinion of that service in any way.3. Profit doesn't go straight into the chairman's pocket. A substantial amount is usually re-invested to either improve or add to service offerings (I'm not talking about operating costs). For a company the size of SKY (or Virgin, BT etc) that re-investment would have to be in the hundreds of millions to have any impact upon their existing services. If they didn't do this then we'd all still be stuck with old SKY boxes (not even SKY+) and HD wouldn't be where it is today either. Do you recognise this or do you feel that companies shouldn't bother somehow?3. There are other companies that offer subscription cable or satellite TV services, both in the UK and all around the world. In my experience both here and abroad the only one I have found which offers a completely advertising-free service is the BBC, which has a substantially different operating model to the others anyway. Do you regard all these other companies with the same distaste or is this reserved for SKY alone? If so, why?